


Nightwardens

by The Rose Mistress (Semilune)



Series: Hear, Feel, Think [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Aether Sex (Final Fantasy XIV), Animalistic, Biting, Body Horror, Body Worship, Character Study, Claiming, Doggy Style, Emotional, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Porn, Emotional Sex, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Feral Behavior, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Ghost Sex, Hurt/Comfort, I'll take Soulmates for $800, Implied Slash, Jealousy, Love Confessions, Magical Bond, Masturbation, Minor Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood, Minor Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light, Minor Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light, Mirror Sex, Monsters, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, POV Alternating, Parallels, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Possessive Behavior, Reunion Sex, Romantic Angst, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Sex, Sexual Fantasy, Soul Bond, Soul Sex, Teasing, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Voyeurism, background sandwich, consensual soul sex, for once some of the emotional constipation is relieved!, implied polyamory, just started chapter two, kind of ghost sex?, minor Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood/Warrior of Light, not actually a oneshot, oh my god that's a real tag, the one that got away, torturing the Exarch (™), what are soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress
Summary: ✦ SPOILERS! Extreme BIG Shadowbringers spoiler warning. Please do not read unless finished with patch (5.0).★ FILTHY! NSFW! 18+ ONLY!  Porn, soul sex, some love requited, some one-sided.Chapter two has been added because I have no self control.☾ ☄ ☽Untempered wardens of cold umbral twilight, lunar, nocturnal, mating in the night.The Warrior of Light and of Darkness fears she has been altered too much to come home.  Estinien argues the counterpoint.Everyone, it turns out, is a monster.☽ ✧ ☾
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch & Warrior of Light, G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light, Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood
Series: Hear, Feel, Think [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/862848
Comments: 29
Kudos: 79





	1. Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> My holy water ran out a long time ago.
> 
> As usual, this attempt to "just write some soul sex" became far more serious than intended. Also as usual, Estinien always gets his way. This hearkens back to my canon Ishgard sandwich, [Astral Fire, Umbral Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/28699292), and the bit of post-Shadowbringers (and unrequited WoL/Exarch) I've written, [Interscintillance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782502/chapters/46832398). Technically part of my "Norvrandt AU."

* * *

☾ ☄ ☽

The first clasp falls free with the barest brush of her fingers. Then the second, then the third, and the sheer chemise draped like a veil on her figure collapses, whisper soft, to the floor.

Her eyes rake the body exposed in the standing mirror.

Naked carcass, flesh and bone. Thin, far more brittle than before. 

Corpse distorted from the Source.

There, she was healthy; defiant and robust _._ Never quite enough, but gorged, at least, on triumphs—terrified of failure, but never quite _alone_. Home, _back in Ishgard_ , at least she was whole.

Now, she is broken. 

Her shoulders slouch with the burdens she’s carried—the blinding Light of the Wardens, the weights of fates and fortunes, twinned calamities wound between worlds. Bygone things she can’t remember, ancient doom bringing ruin. Now, she swallows salt; searches olive skin marred with quiet catastrophe.

Warrior of Darkness, far from divine.

So many marks. So many remotely acquired. She is notched and hatched and downright _damaged,_ scored with scars and striations. Baelsar. Zenos. _Emet-Selch._ Crossed by claws of beasts and dragons, wounds left by demons that might have been—

In the darkness of her Crystarium bedroom, her hair seems, subtly, to shine. It is bleached bone-bright, accursedly radiant. She grips the faded locks in both hands. Her eyes burn. She chokes back a whine.

Aethertracks under her skin start to glow, and there is something lodged in the back of her thoughts. Something she knows she’s forgotten—something old, something lost that she’s _trying to find._

Pain blazes, hot like wildfire, down the nerves of her spine. She takes a bracing breath to quench the discomfort, and in the buzz of her mind, she can feel the heat of Aymeric’s worrying eyes. 

_Beloved,_ the shadows of recollection beckon. _Come home and permit me to—_

“No.”

In the silence, her pleading is less than a whimper—but enough, by a mercy, to chase away the specter. 

She can’t allow him to haunt her. _Not now._

_Not like this._

She chokes again. Her knees tremble.

_Not when I might never—_

Her vision is a blur. Her heart pounds a too-common rhythm.

_Aymeric. Estinien—_

Terror. _Trepidation_. Dread for herself and all she dared to love—all that she ever _once wanted._ She blinks the tears away and stares at her blemished reflection; turns to trace the outline of her backbone.

Was the torment not meant to be over? Were the final blows of past and present not dealt in that mirage, upon the illusion of verandas built in long-forgotten Amaurot? The first and final primordial trial—the last dregs of Norvrandt’s noxious umbral light—stifled, at last, by _astral darkness._

_His darkness._

_H—_

Samantha swallows hard at the notion of his name—fears to think it. 

She feels, again, one lingering wonder that longs to be spoken. 

Who were you? Who was I?

Who were _we?_

_We once lived._

There is a bone-deep ache. Magnitude, enormity she struggles to place.

But instead of pondering unanswered questions, she maps veins. They cobweb her skin like cracks in a vase, golden fissures, almost glittering. Much like the skin of some Eaters, they streak to pucker and tangle. Grout in a mosaic, branches of a vine, they furrow and spread—cracks in the surface where aether has strained her, sectioning off the bright patches where pigment has faded. Her skin is mottled down her back, where the Light has drained her—stained matte and insipid as plaster.

Somehow, it reminds her of Nidhogg. _Estinien—_

_A curse much like his._

The Hero of Norvrandt takes a deep breath and banishes thoughts— _forget them all_. She is so slim now she can count the ridges of her backbone. Standing there, naked, rear to the mirror, she begins.

One. Two. _Three—_

It is not her voice that bellows in the hush. Not a sound so much as a _feeling_ , deafening and _invasive—_

_What in the bloodiest godsforsaken depths—_

Her stomach twists itself into twelve knots. 

No.

_How?_

Breathless, she whips on her heels; searches the room but finds nothing. Nothing but the thunder of his ungodly fury—

_—curse whatever slagging hellbeasts marred you into the reeking, rotting—_

No. _No_. 

She shuts her eyes.

This is a dream. The room is _empty_. She is entombed here— _she_ , a cage of flesh among phantoms. She shivers and closes off tighter; stops hoping and hunting. In no realm is it possibly, _conceivably—_

He palpably scoffs. _Foolish thing._ She feels the lurch of air inside her, as though it is her own, and a huff on the back of her neck. _When was anything—among the inconceivable—ever conceivably believable?_

Samantha swallows hard. 

Reckless— _foolish,_ as he said, to imagine he could reach her—

Not between the Source and First and Stream stretched between them.

And so, she never imagined.

But now …

Her voice is little more than a scatter of dry ashes, so soft it nearly vanishes. 

“Estinien?”

Her window is closed, but a breeze, parched and arid, shoves its way past her face. She ignores the glimmer of her awful washed-out hair; takes deep, hungry breaths of the fragrance of _smoke._

Something crackles. She feels the heat of something like a campfire, smells snow and conifers—

“Estinien,” she gasps, sure of it now—jerks at the touch of _his warm fingers,_ unmistakable. Both hands grasp her, hard and greedy, from behind. To the right, the tips of wyrm claws graze her stomach, and something inside of her pleasantly sizzles.

_Mine._

“Heaven bless it,” he rumbles, and this time, she _hears it—_ feels it on her neck. A hot kiss there. His words are hitched, frustrated, _impatient._ “I thought you might _never invite me.”_

Everything blurs. She grapples for his hands—feels scale and skin and scars beneath her palms. She blinks and stares down, where his knuckles should be, and sees nothing. Her fingers are curled around solid air. 

She is touching him, but he is not there. Estinien is everywhere, and he is _nowhere._

Long hair tickles her back. He kisses down her nape, mouth picking slow paths between her shoulder blades. She feels teeth and tongue as he moves up again, humid breath on her ear. “Look in the mirror.”

She twists without hesitation.

There she stands, still bared to the skin. And there, looming behind her—towering, tarnished by his own monstrous Warden of prehistoric magick—there, in all his brooding, glorious, _fearsome magnificence—_

There, Estinien _is._

She turns from the mirror again, desperate for _presence—_ finds nothing, where he _isn’t—_ but _feels_ his breath on her lips. “Ye of little faith,” he grumbles, and she gasps into the darkness as a tongue, warm and wanting, slides into her mouth.

She cannot see him, but she _tastes him;_ peppery embers, mortal and eldritch and entirely _him._

Her groan is obscene. Everything inside her surges to meet him. She shuts her eyes and opens her mouth and receives his blazing, awakening flavor—and for one interminable instant, lips to invisible lips, she feels witnessed.

_Alive again._

Samantha is suffused with him—his _aether_ —for what else can he be but another solid specter from the Source? He, her twin flame; equal parts servant and smoldering shepherd. Burgundy next to the scraps of her brightness, the motes of his Eye longtime sown inside her stir and flurry in sparks, hurrying back toward their master.

Hellhound or herdsman, watcher or wyrmking—whatever he is, he goes breathless _._

They part. Panting but missing no measures, he gathers her against him. Groin to her rear, the way they match is practiced; a primitive, animal dance. A tremble shudders through her on instinct as she realizes—

He, too, is undressed. 

“Watch me,” he exhales. She turns to the mirror. 

Estinien curls his long body behind her, and she feels every naked sinew. His chin hooks her shoulder, his nose on her neck. He takes the shell of her ear between teeth and tugs gently. The bite of his canines, the flick of his tongue—her back arches on instinct and he purrs her name—keeps their eyes locked in the reflection. 

“Take a step closer,” he breathes, never looking away.

She moves toward the glass. He follows. The nearer they get, the more she can see—the set of his lips, stern and starving—the tension in his brow lines—the anguish and devotion, plainly vivid on his face.

“Keep watching,” he croaks, and her heart is in her throat. She stumbles and makes a strangled sound. 

His eyebrows knit and her tears threaten to spoil his image. 

“Hold me,” she begs, and the incorporeal hands on her stomach crush her tight against him. His lips are at her nape and wild words are on her lips, but she can’t make sense of them. Nothing makes sense. Nothing, that is, except for his mouth—a maw parted wide to scruff and claim her—tongue and teeth she can feel pluck hard paths of possession down her neck. Marks, raw and real, are bitten on her skin; drawn to dark bruises like blossoms of depravity.

She shrieks his name in desperation. Her yearning, her _despair,_ is unthinkable.

“Where are you,” she sobs.

He sucks the soft flesh behind her ear and grunts. “With you now.” His thunder thrums through her. “Pay attention to this.” His fingers spread. She arches and gasps as he smooths his palms down; as thumbs curve to rake her inner thighs. He strokes both hands low and back to the apex, and she sighs.

“What is this?” is her question.

He answers. “Whatever you desire.”

 _You,_ something inside of her shouts.

Estinien curls his hand between her legs—his right— _the hand of the dragon_ —and is careful not to touch her with its talons. Her eyes flick down along the mirror, watching him stroke with the pads of long, black-scaled fingers.

Whatever space it is in which he presently exists, he brings forth her wetness. She listens to the whispers of her wanton, wanting body, and lust makes her dissolve. Self-control melts. Knees buckled, down she falls.

Hands and knees on the floor, down with her, he follows. 

“Can you—” The words catch in her mouth and she whines as he mantles above her. She is close enough to fog the mirror with her breath—watches his reflection as he bows and _covers._ Estinien keeps their eyes locked, the glass as their tether.

He bends her over, low on all fours.

She moans. He murmurs, “Open your hands.” She unfurls them at his urging, and he twines them, thumbs and palms and fingers, completely together. The weight of his body behind and above her makes the tears prick again.

So _close_. So _simple._ So many insatiable instants—familiar mountains in the Mists—memories, moments, midnights in the manor—even mossy Doman moorlands, where he managed, miraculously, to _find her—_

“Eyes on me,” he whispers, firmly weaving their fingers. He licks a path to nip along her jawline, the pitch of his stare ablaze through his lashes. She is drunk on the force of his reflection, half-drowned in hungry reminiscence—

 _Can you feel it?_ she suddenly wonders, intoxicated. _What I’m thinking?_

She is ensnared in his lips and his hair. Something his, again, thrums through her. 

_Aye._

And then, with the rush of a lungful of breath that stirs her own tangles—she can _feel him as well._

A heart, hollow and haunted; hard and hot and wreathed in thorns and cinders. Grit to waylay all that would enter—rime to quench embers of vengeance. _Love me not_ , something deep inside him yells, and yet she _feels him,_ skittish and gentle—cautiously, _carefully_ , so sentimental.

Soul as fierce as it is tender—

Quiet, terrified.

His parted lips go still against her cheek. 

She realizes she has stopped breathing; forgets to inhale as waves of passion ebb and surge through her. _One-two, one-two,_ the tide of his lifeblood. And then a name, soft and sacred, purrs down her spine. _Aymeric._ _S_ he _feels_ how much he reveres him. Every fiber of his being has attuned to _Borel_ like a choir to a chime. 

_Estinien’s love._

It is smothering.

A sloppy path of kisses finds her ear. His breath is molten. “It is yours,” he whispers, cracked and shallow.

_My love—_

_Mine, mine, mine—_

And then her heart twists.

She feels it—his fealty, his fervor—

_Fixation—_

_On her._

World-weary soldier bound only to Commander. Lost lamb who fancied an end to upheavals, crossed instead by a mage wielding ice and black magicks. Sorceress, _enchantress—witch so bewitching—_

_She waltzed, will-o'-the-wisp, into my wishes._

“Estinien,” the hiss on her lips. She watches in the mirror as he staggers, curving above her. 

_Hex me, thaw me—light me on fire—_

“Samantha,” he pants. His left hand moves in a lurch down between them—his cock, hard and swollen, slides to tease her. She grunts and bites her lip. _Gods,_ how long has it been since she _felt him;_ his flawless, consummate shape? She sinks forward in creature submission, clumsy and eager and aching and _needing._

No words. Nothing but the mantra in her body, in time with her heartbeat— _take me, take me, take me—_

The answering pulse of his aether— _this one is mine._

His mouth is back on her temple. “Say it to me,” he groans, with his voice and every ilm of his spirit.

The crown of him slips to press, gentle—blunt and warm and _tempting as sin—_ and she whines and spreads her thighs. “I am,” comes the truth and the vow, and she reaches between them herself. The witch keeps her eyes locked on the wild watcher in the mirror—takes his hot cockhead in her hand. “Yours.”

She knows she is wrapped around nothing—nothing but _aether,_ somehow _there_ —knows that if she looks between her legs, she will find only _empty_. But she can _feel_ the way he fills her, smooth and throbbing as she nocks him; feels the nudge and the twitch and sweet stretch as she cants back to take him, tip to ridge to velvet center.

_Perfect._

Stardust spikes up her spine, ice and moonlight. Her toes curl. He arches in the mirror like the lawless beast he is, mouth dropped open in a howl. His voice is breathless. “Take me,” he pants, and she bucks back against him. Eyes rolled back, unbridled, Estinien roars and bottoms out inside her.

After month upon month, it is almost too much. The way he fits is immaculate—the way he _feels,_ somehow better. He thrusts and he ruts, and sobs of bliss fall from her lips as he _fucks her._

His eyes are glazed and feral as he sees how much he wrecks her, lips parted at her ear. The clap of them is shameless as they pitch into a rhythm. Pleasure is haze made of sound and sensation—the slick of his cock gliding back and forth inside her—the slap of his low-hanging manhood, swaying proudly to smack her.

He is inside her in every _conceivable way,_ and still she wants _more_.

A visceral tremor shudders through them both. Estinien laughs, very shallow; moves with adoring, relentless intention. His breath at her ear is scorching and honest—his nimble left forefingers stroke on her clit. “I love you.”

“I love _you,”_ she cries, sparks in her eyes, back curved high.

He huffs and bears his weight against her. She collapses to the floor, willing surrender; searches his stare in the mirror. He is watching, attentive, every motion deliberate. His brow knits. “Tell me why.”

She gasps as he hilts to the base. She feels his heartbeat, sheathed so deeply—pulsing, _waiting._ “You—” The tears are from pleasure, the ache of something molten in her chest. “You found a way to _Norvrandt—”_

“I would vanquish hell to find you,” he thunders, and she feels his cock flex. He bends close above, slips back and thrusts in—fingers flickering patterns as he fucks her afresh. The din of their coupling is natural, savage. 

“Estinien,” she groans. The world narrows down. All that exists is the drumming of his hips—the throb of him buried within her. 

Her body collapses, off-guard, with the force of her climax, and he flattens after. 

Static floods her senses. The length inside her jerks and spasms. Above her, she feels him go rigid.

She watches in the mirror as he tosses his head; spectacular, _arresting._ He shouts, and indigo-crimson erupts from his back—pinions of shade, ragged shadows, invisible but for the mirror. Against the darkness that leaches from his body, the stains of albino on her backbone seem to glow.

Curses tumble from his lips. Estinien comes in an avalanche of rumbles. 

“All—the hells—” He stutters so many times she loses count. “ _Slagging damn it.”_

Levin winks behind her eyes. Ice slides down her spine. For a moment, everything is wicked white _._ Pinned by the weight of his spent and helpless body, she is caught between pleasure and fright.

But Estinien is reflected in the glass, and she is still beneath him—and, for a moment, she lets herself be lost to delight. When she laughs, her breath comes out in a mist. “What did you do to me?” she rasps, exhaling condensation.

Above her, he shudders and winces; slips out and folds down to wrap her in his limbs. She can feel the pebbling of scales that freckle him, left shoulder, right forearm. There on the floor, he rolls to become the big spoon. “Reminded you where you belong,” he grumbles, hooking together their legs.

She cackles while he shakes the last throes of release. “I hope you don’t mean _underneath you,”_ she drawls, rolling her head to get a better glimpse of his image. From the glass, Estinien watches her, darkly, devoutly.

“Beneath me,” he mutters, eyes roving her face. “Above me.” He combs his clawed hand through her washed-out hair—pallid stardust next to his white and dazzling silver. “Beside me, no matter,” he mutters. He cranes his neck to reach her throat, to worship with teeth and pious kisses. “So long as you never deny me again.”

Holding her captive, tenderly shackled, he finds her mouth with his. Before she closes her eyes, allayed by the afterglow, she catches a glimpse of them, mingled—skin on skin, his black wyrmskin by her light-bleached patches. Untempered monsters of cold umbral twilight, lunar, nocturnal, mating in the night.

“Estinien,” she whispers, and he hums against her lips. She opens her eyes and it is air alongside her—turns, desperate, to the mirror—finds his calm, unblinking stare. “How long will you stay here?”

He licks the shell of her ear. “Only half here,” he reminds her. His claws rake again through her tangles and he takes a deep breath; buries his nose at the crook of her neck. “Come home,” he purrs, low and hard and rough. She tenses but his next words assuage her. “Come home and be _fucked well and proper.”_

She grins. The promise makes everything tingle again. Her nipples pull to tight, excited peaks, and his hands are immediately upon them. She laughs and leans her head against him. “What, exactly, is _fucked well and proper?”_ she asks, taking the backs of his knuckles in her palms, guiding his path on her chest. 

He shrugs and moves so they both face the glass again. Estinien rolls his body close behind her, watching her reflection through his lashes. His thumbs map lazy crescents on her breasts, and he sucks another love bite on her neck. “The sort where my come ends up inside you,” he decides.

She makes a sound of faux revulsion and laughs. “Appalling,” she grunts, her voice a bit too husky to be trusted. But her forehead crinkles with the truth she hadn’t— _and should have—_ considered. One of her hands dips to touch between her legs, and while she can feel her own familiar slickness—

No mess from him to contend with.

“Oh.” She flushes, cheeks to chest. _Thank the Twelve._

He snorts and tweaks a nipple. “What do the Twelve have to do with it?”

She flushes hotter and pinches his hand. “Oh,” again. _You can hear that._

Estinien grunts. In the mirror, his brow tenses. His thumbs halt their ministrations. “Do you not _—enjoy—_ when I—”

“Of course I do,” she barks, wriggling back against him and pouting. “But since arriving in Norvrandt—” Ashamed at herself, she huffs her mortification. “I haven’t been taking precautions,” she grumbles, avoiding his stare.

It takes him a moment to parse the declaration, but the acknowledgement comes, very gruff. “Ah.” His hands remain still. He clears his throat. “There would be no need if—there be no reason.”

“No need,” she repeats, with another soft breath of chagrin. “But if I come home—”

“When you come home,” Estinien growls, teeth back on her neck.

Her eyes flutter. His canines are sharp. The points of them press into her flesh, and she feels a thrill of mortal transience, wondering if he might _use them._ “When I come home,” she accepts, and he eases by a margin, “I will need to be sure to _remember.”_

He grunts again, placated; laves with his tongue in place of a bite. A thoughtful sound hums in his chest as he tenses his arms. “The dining room,” he mutters, zero context, tilting her slowly onto her back.

She coughs out a laugh—watches in the mirror as he hefts himself above her. “What?”

He kneels and spreads her thighs with both hands. “I want to fuck you there,” he clarifies. “Or in the kitchen.”

She chokes in shock and mock outrage as he shifts over top of her. She feels his body roll and settle, his tapered waist cradled in the valley of her legs. She grips him in the bend. “Only with the Vicomte’s explicit permission,” she teases, raspier than planned. “If you do, in fact, refer to his manor.”

“Very well.” Estinien leans his mouth against her temple and grins. “He can join us if he wishes,” he amends. She rolls her eyes; watches his reflection dip a hand between them—feels him position his arousal against her. “But for now,” he rumbles, using the glans of his hardening erection to stroke her. “Take me again.”

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

It is late when the Exarch, in all his misjudgment of time, realizes he forgot to check on her.

“Shite.”

His whisper is penitent, unheard by any other but himself. He wanders through the Crystarium at a meander, heading for his Tower, forcing a leisurely pace. Enough of his _rushing_. Enough of being _frantic._

But since the fall of Emet-Selch, the Exarch finds himself becoming more G’raha. For all the years he has lived as a creature more magick than man, he finds himself plagued by desires very _mortal._

_Just one touch—just one smile—just one moment beside her—_

Careful though he may be to keep reining them in—veiling his motives with _control—_ he is aware of the lies he chants to himself. 

_I only wish to check on her wellbeing._ _There is no other intention._

He takes a sharp breath as he passes the gates.

_Surely she would do the same for me._

G’raha knows it to be true; that she would worry for his welfare. Only when he steps inside the Ocular does he allow himself an edge of desperation, leaning his staff against the wall, ignoring the clatter as it falls. 

With any luck, his intrusion is unwarranted. But given the number of moments he has caught her, hiding the tears in her eyes—

His right arm, scintillant gemscale, glitters as he lifts it to the glass.

It is dark in her chamber, and empty in the bed. He searches the room with a twinkling of panic, and finds her supine on the floor.

Supine, and _disrobed._

His eyes dart away from the image.

The Exarch, in all his _unfortunate timing._

He should close the channel, he thinks. He should dispel the connection.

Instead, he furtively glances through his lashes— _as though that grants you any pardon, you dirty old man—_ and finds her struggling, knees bent, hips uplifting in a motion that strangely bears a resemblance to—

He chokes a dry breath. 

His heart begins to race as he watches her legs crook to hook in midair, as though an invisible body is there. Her eyes are fixed on the mirror in her bedroom, but when G’raha looks, he sees nothing.

But there can be no mistaking it—her hunger—her anguish—the way that she _writhes_ —

The hairs on his neck start to prickle, frissons thrilling down his spine.

He shifts his weight as his body recognizes and responds to what he watches— _look away from her, you warped, pathetic degenerate_ —and he whispers a spell under his breath. Behind him, the door to the Ocular latches and locks.

All thought disappears from his mind as he loosens the ties of his vestments, leaving the tiers of his robes to the floor. In fact, he ignores reality altogether as he slides his Spoken palm between his legs and takes himself in hand.

G’raha flips the fringe from his eyes, and locks his awareness on _her._

He strokes his cock to attention—watches her squirm—can almost feel himself buried inside her, giving her such vicious pleasure.

_Clearly something comes to visit; someone skilled in the art of her carnal satisfaction—_

But it makes no matter. No matter when he can so easily play act it is him.

How often has he dreamt of her, pinned there beneath him? Pinned against that very floor—riding him on the bedclothes—bent before him on her knees in the Umbilicus, shouting his name to the heavens themselves—

He stumbles forward, tail whipping tensely behind him.

Her mouth is open now, silent by virtue of the limits of the image. His mouth opens in answer as he envisions their tongues lashed together; tasting her breath as he plunges within, leaving a trace of him deep beneath her skin.

Her fingers stroking his backbone—her hand at the base of his tail—her legs hugging him tighter as he—

The power of his orgasm brings him to a kneel. His toes curl as he imagines spilling inside her, marking her as _his._ He jerks and spasms, motions going sloppy. The sound he makes echoes through the chamber.

G’raha closes his eyes.

_Shite._

With a wave of his crystalline fingers, the scrying glass dims.

He takes a breath through his nose. Wipes his hand on his thigh. Then he shambles, half-blind, for his wrappings. He uses the white robe to mop up his mess— _no match for Allagan magicks—_ and shrugs on his undermost layers.

He stands, and he knows it will never be enough just to _imagine._

But for now, his worldly cravings are sated. For now, G’raha Tia fades back into the Exarch, and he reins himself in. Just a carcass, flesh and bone—corpse distorted from the Source.

Then, he was more man than magick; rebellious and young. Never brave enough to tell her, but gorged, at least, on friendship—terrified of failure, but never quite _alone._ Home, back in Mor Dhona, at least he wasn’t broken.

He heads for the door, collects his fallen crozier from the floor. His shoulders slouch with the misfortunes he’s carried—the gravity of Allag, the twinning of Hydaelyn and Norvrandt—the enormity, the destiny, of both bitter worlds.

Crystal Exarch of the Tower, _the first and final facet._

His sandals make soft sounds against ancient, glittering floors; stonework made of the selfsame gemscale as his body. He is scored with mineral striations which, in the darkness of the hallway, seem subtly to glow. The crystal that tracks through his skin starts to sparkle, and he tries not to acknowledge what crosses his thoughts. 

Something old, something lost, something _never forgotten—_

Heartache, tight in his chest. He takes a bracing breath to quench the discomfort, but in the back of his mind, he feels the phantom of toes in the fold of his leg—the ghost of her hand finding his beneath the pallet.

Every fiber of his existence narrows as he remembers.

 _Stay then,_ the shadows of recollection beckon. _We can face the future together._

In the silence, his rough breathing is less than a whisper—but enough, by a mercy, to chase away the specter. He cannot allow her to haunt him.

_Not anymore. Not like this. Not when she—_

His heart pounds a too-common rhythm, and he quells it.

He has had many decades to bury his love—to lay to rest all he once wanted.

His torment is meant to be over.

Still, as he moves to the Umbilicus—to the books that need reading, the unanswered questions—he feels a bone-deep ache. Magnitude, enormity he struggles not to place. He feels, again, one lingering wonder that longs to be spoken.

_What might we have been?_

_Samantha—_

He swallows hard at the thought of her name—at the blows of past and present, inflicted on himself.

Somehow—

Somehow, it reminds him of Emet-Selch.

_A curse much like his._

The Architect of the Crystarium takes a deep breath; banishes thoughts and trudges deep into the belly of the Tower. Deep into his skeleton temple, his shrine, his living testament to time—

He is entombed here—he, a cage of bone among phantasms. He shivers and closes off tighter; stops hoping and hunting for now. In no realm is it possibly, conceivably _believable._ Careless— _foolish,_ to imagine he could reach her.

Not between the past and the present, and the worlds stretched between them.

Misremember, pretermit.

_Be sustained upon wishes, and try to forget._

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *


	2. Refraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big riffing on [Interscintillance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782502/chapters/46832398) here.
> 
> When the scarlet of his Allagan eyes meets her stare, what does she see? The historian who mapped a primordial labyrinth? The scholar who so loved to torment and tease her? The archer who tailed the Adventurer, naïve and eager, through the wending of the Fogfens?
> 
> Or does she see a reckless, alien stranger, who doomed her dearest friends?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gently NSFW.

* * *

☽ ✧ ☾

“Raha?”

The voice that beckons his nose from his tomes in the Umbilicus is muffled, but every nerve in his body prickles quickly to attention. Even her quietest whisper, he thinks, would make him _awaken._

The façade of the Exarch shimmers and crackles, G’raha Tia yawning to the fore.

He lowers his cowl—calms and collects himself—and with his Spoken hand, he opens the door. 

There she is. _Samantha_. Angel of each of his dreams and of some waking nightmares; the creature he worships with his every wretched facet. Yes, her tall body has thinned from her trials in Norvrandt— _the stress of it renders her fragile, the strain of all you compel her to bear—_ skin and keratin bleached by the Wardens— _you made her touch them, you made her brittle, dragging her into your grasping misfortunes—_

But every time he looks at her—

Every time she puts her eyes on _him,_ her hold over G’raha grows tighter.

_Nothing worth doing ever came fair._

She gives him a grin. He swallows very hard.

Now that the shock, the bliss of greeting her is faded, he notices the minutiae—the circles under her brown eyes—the scarf she wears to hide the dark trail of bruises on her neck—the ragged impressions of _bite marks—_

Against his will, an image haunts him: Her, naked and writhing on the floor of the boudoir, beneath the throes of a phantasmal lover. He tries to push the vision from his mind—tries to ignore the way his vile flesh thrills at the fact that he _bore witness_.

 _Replace the apparition, make her_ mine—

“Samantha,” he says, voice schooled to meticulous smoothness. He sounds like the Exarch, but most of him hopes he reminds her of a friend—of smiling together in Mor Dhona, grilling fish on open fires, licking char-burnt fingers and sharing wild laughter. Warped by time though he is, G’raha still wishes to entice her.

Fiercely. 

_Surely my attentions would be better than a specter—_ “Might I be of some assistance?”

She nods. 

It is an easy reflex to step aside, to give the hero berth as she approaches; intrinsic as tides stirred by cyclic lunar phases; instinctive as the tilting of his axis to her star. Unstoppable as a total eclipse. He gazes up at her, a sun-dazzled supplicant, as she clears her throat. “I may be privy to something that could—facilitate your research for the Scions.”

G’raha’s ears twitch forward. Suspicion itches his mind as he invites her. “Do share.”

She passes him; takes a slow step to his table. Her skirts brush the floor, pale and diaphanous, and he realizes—with a jump of his heart rate—she wears the sarong that he gave her. Would that he could shower her in daily venerations; offer and give and _provide._ Place his adoration at the altar of his goddess—help her to _feel it—_ his every emotion, his quietest sighs— _his loudest, wildest, most starving desires—_

For a long moment, she thinks and waits. He watches her eyes rake his bookshelves; take stock of the piles of grimoires and relics all housed there. He ponders that, on each of her rare visits to this chamber, she stares at his collection with longing, much like lust. Passion for knowledge, he knows, is perhaps her keenest weakness. 

“I received a strange sort of visitor last night,” she finally admits, confirming his voyeuristic hunch. “Someone from the Source that I—” She cuts herself off; edits her next words. “Have a bond with.” G’raha keeps his stare fixed on her face; carefully watches her soften. “He plays at being inflexible,” she continues, something faraway in her expression. “Always does. But he will help if I ask him—and I have reason to believe in his … aetherical significance.”

It is fondness he perceives in her eyes, then—bald affection for _another_ he is forced now to _observe._

G’raha has to press his lips together. 

He physically swallows his resentment; bristles at the envy he feels for this so-called _visitor_ —powerful, unnamed, _important_ —who enjoys her utmost confidence and is _clearly formidably intimate—_

“His aetherical significance,” he echoes, interrupting himself, staying placid. “Care to elaborate?”

Samantha, avoiding his stare, takes the back of his chair in one hand and drags it out. She sighs; sinks heavily into the seat. “Will you help me summon him to Norvrandt?”

His heart sinks at the thought. _Summon her lover in body and spirit._ “I cannot possibly refuse you,” he says, not quite meaning to speak it aloud. He wets his lips. “And given your stated— _connection_ , it should be simple to alter extant incantations.” A shaky breath. “What sort of bond persists between you?”

She stares at the table. “I don’t know,” she says quietly, combing back her pale hair. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

There is a lump in his throat. 

He knows what she means. _I don’t trust you_. 

Even after begging him to stay in his Crystarium. Even after telling him she feared, almost, to _go home—_

“Do I speak to the Exarch, or G’raha?” Samantha talks softly, half to herself. She flexes her fingers; watches them bend. “Do I speak to my friend, or some cold, ancient creature?” She glances at him then, a bit too cutting, too _knowing_ for comfort. “Even now, I want to hide myself from you.”

G’raha laughs, breathy. Uncomfortable. “I see.”

Her eyes take on the hard, squinting quality he was expecting and dreading. 

She asks it. “How much, exactly, have you seen?”

He coughs. “More than I care to confess.” He begins to plead guilty, but further words choke his throat. He stops talking.

She stares at him dully. “Raha.”

His true name strikes again, like a hammer on an anvil. The sound he makes can only be described as helpless. “You would be—” He is caught by the force of her stare. _She deserves your confession._ “Disappointed in me.”

She considers the word; lets it roll in her mouth. “Disappointed.” Her eyes lift to search the glittering ceiling, slow and casual. She takes an audible breath. “Are you sure _disappointed_ is how you would phrase it?” Her dark gaze flicks back to find his. G’raha’s blood thrills with a mixture of fear and potent attraction as she stares him down. “Would you feel disappointed in _me,_ if I were doing—” She stops and stares at him intensely. “Whatever it is that _you’re doing?”_

The truth slams into him, heavy as a mallet.

She knows. Samantha _knows what he has done—_

His idol has caught him _—perhaps in flagrante delicto—_

And it is _disgraceful_. 

Ludicrous that, in this very instant—even _more,_ somehow—all he really wants to do is join her in the chair. 

His body shouts at him to shatter their boundaries _now;_ to crush their flesh together and rake both hands through her hair. _Kiss her, claim her—_ ridiculous, that in the heartbeats before he divulges his transgressions— _because you must come clean and divulge them, you must if you want her to trust you again—_ he yearns to throw himself upon her; to _bite_ and _lick_ and _drink her very air._

G’raha digs his heels into the floor and pants a breath. “No,” he concedes. “I would feel betrayed and belittled—to be treated like a specimen of research by one of my—” He wants to say _closest,_ but does she feel the same? “—old friends.”

Her lips purse, but she seems the beginning of placated. 

The beginning because she clearly is not _finished_.

“Speaking of research,” she says, not entirely smoothly but certainly with purpose, “The person that paid me a visit mentioned feeling rather— _watched.”_ Again, the power of her focus serves to startle and stir him—makes something jolt like levin through his pelvis. Beneath his robes, at the apex of his thighs—

He feels his member twitch.

His mouth goes dry as the knolls of Mord Souq. 

Somehow, he is _aroused by this._

Her half-lidded eyes search his face. If he was a margin more senseless, he might believe her aware of his erection _._ “Would you happen to know,” she asks casually, “Who might have been conducting observations?”

His body immediately reacts. Blood surges downward, making him dizzy. He has dreamt of this, her discovering, too many times as he watches through the glass. Even now, his hand jerks at the impulse to touch himself.

_Disgraceful._

He swallows hard, grateful for his layers— _the sand in the hourglass is out._ His ears swivel all the way back as he forces himself to say it— _say it, say it, say it—_ “It was I.” The admission leaves him, thin and dry. “I—” His voice cracks. His tail whips behind him. His smalls are too tight, his shame at critical mass. “I was watching.”

Her lips press into a line. He watches a flush mottle her cheeks as she takes a stiff breath. “I thought so,” she mutters. Her brow crinkles with disgust. “And you were right,” comes the addendum. “I am disappointed.”

He moves to brace himself at the far end of the table, lightheaded. “I will not beg your forgiveness,” he says, his voice absurdly reedy, the blood still surging _downward_. “I never deserved it.” _One confession done. Nothing to lose—_ “But know—above the sins I have committed—” His throat is like sandpaper. He swallows twice. “All was done because—”

_I love you._

He is frozen, staring. Her nose is red, her face blotchy with indignation, but otherwise blank. From the chair, she watches, impassive, _expectant_. All he can hear is the throb of his heart—the pulse in his ears—the force of his Spoken lifeblood, by her, _reawakened._

The Tower around them threatens to quake.

_Tell her, tell her, tell her—_

“I only wished—” Another hard swallow. He trails his crystalline fingers along the edge of the table. Takes a shuddering step toward her, a very shaky breath. “Always, all I have wished—”

“Raha.” His name escapes her in frustration—the same nonplussed tone of voice she used for him _back then_ —

_The glorified shack is lit by the aurum-red sunset. He is laughing—rolling away on the floor—his vest caught on the toe of her pointed boot. He blinks up at her, cheeky, and she scowls. “Stop it, Raha—”_

Wood and metal groan beneath the grasp of his hand.

Her face turns toward the sound. He jerks away as though burned. When the scarlet of his Allagan eyes meets her stare, what does she see? The historian who mapped a primordial labyrinth? The scholar who so loved to torment and tease her? The archer who tailed the Adventurer, naïve and eager, through the wending of the Fogfens?

Or does she see a reckless, alien stranger, who doomed her dearest friends?

His tail swishes, limp beneath his garments, and for the hundredth time, his nerve is lost. Instead of saying what, for lifetimes, he has wanted— “Let me help you summon your ghostly companion.”

There is tension in her brow, something distant in her eyes. She stands. “Wait,” she mutters.

And then she is closing the distance.

She comes very near, and G’raha is frozen.

A thousand doubts and urges possess him. His heart races. He feels the heat of her body, and memory surges— _air, unseasonably balmy—a cool and thrilling breeze—the lake, whiffs of smoke from Castrum Centri—_

And _her,_ here and now; tea and candles and magick.

The moon was new the night he knew he loved her.

_Totally eclipsed._

Something shifts in his fractured, aching chest. His fingers itch to hold her, and then—

And then she _takes his hands._

All he can do is stare down as she grips him, her palms warm and callused on crystal and skin. “Raha,” she says, the sound, the _touch_ enough to break him. She smooths thumbs across his knuckles, the facets in his sparkling, inhuman fingers. 

He cannot look at her. 

_Brazen to assume I could escape her unscathed._

“I am so sorry, Samantha,” he exhales, for the twelve thousandth time. _Would that you knew my contrition. Would that I could offer myself to your Echo to show, beyond doubt, my repentance._

But before he can continue— 

“Can I ask you a question?”

In his ears, something crackles. He is nothing but static, buzzing aether made man.

“Always and ever,” he says, his voice so thin it is less than a whisper.

Silence. She settles her weight. Takes a breath. He dares to lift his chin, and finds a glint behind her eyes—shrewd and clever, clean as Silvertear moonbeams. “What did you truly wish to tell me?”

And for the twelve thousandth time, he is spellbound.

_Tell her._

_You could and you_ should.

He maps her with his gaze. She stares him down. Waves of pale, blanched-white hair frame her face—the wrong shade but lovely, regardless—so like the shimmering starlight she replaced. The ceiling, the Tower behind her is scintillant, but diamonds themselves would be outstripped by her magnificence.

_Sun dipped low on the horizon. World bullion orange. Chest very full, pulse gone hot and electric—_

Tension curls low in his belly.

Wanting, wild and wayward and well overwaited— _I love you, I love you, I love you—_

Expanse contracts. He imagines many things. Pulling free his hands. Pressing near her body. Nose nuzzled to neck, up on toes to kiss her lips. And _oh,_ he wants to kiss her, to transfix her—

He loves with the dregs of his marrow, to the bottommost crux of his heart. His love is untamed and _alive_. And he wants, now and always, to be trapped in her gravity—in the undertow, carried away. Her brilliance shines above him, his star-crossed double star. And as he looks into the sunlight of her face, his heart refracting every facet, her eyes remind him of warm Mor Dhonan sunsets, patiently waiting.

Patient, despite all his sins. Waiting, just like him.

He wants to back down. But instead, he grips her, palm to palm—pulls her the faintest breadth closer.

His heart is pounding. His brow barely reaches her shoulder, but beside her—

_Burdened by light and truth and shadows—_

Beside her, he feels tall.

Dreams equate not to waking. Nothing ever tends to happen in the way that it was planned. But in that moment, fears set aside, the Crystal Exarch—no—Raha of the G tribe and the curse of the Allagan eyes lifts on toe tips to whisper, lashes lowered, the secret he carried, raw and careworn, through time.

“I love you.”

☽ ✧ ☾

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Crunchier than usual, but if you like this, you should totally read my other works!
> 
> Encouraged, as tends to happen these days, by the [Book Club](https://discord.gg/qGQ8Grj) ♡


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